© 2015 Edward Moore
She works in a book store, but wait until you see her behind.
~ Shrike describing his girlfriend to Miss Lonelyhearts in Nathanael West's novella Miss Lonelyhearts
Do you remember those musty, dusty, often dimly lit shops specializing in "used, rare, and scholarly books"? It is within such books that one occasionally discovers marginal or interlinear notes jotted down by an unknown reader. Once in a while these jottings prove to be of value, illuminating a certain difficult passage, or providing a cross-reference or biographical detail that one would have otherwise overlooked. The literary world is becoming a less personal place, due to the encroachment of digital media and the consequent vanishing of independent bookshops. It was in one of these endangered habitats that I recently picked up a few well-worn tomes, literally for a song. The pretty college-age woman behind the counter was listening to Bob Dylan, and I began singing along, in my best Dylan impression, to "Visions of Johanna." The latter-day hippy was impressed, and as a reward for my hipness pointed me in the direction of a pile of books that were there for the taking, too battered and marked with readers' glosses to be sold. I picked up Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts and flipped to the first page, where I encountered the jotting that serves as the title of this little piece. The name of one of the main secondary characters, Shrike, is circled, and this definition provided. It struck me as odd, so I took out my phone and did a quick Google search. The definition for "shrike" that came up was: "a songbird with a strong, sharply hooked beak, used for impaling lizards, insects, and small birds." Oddly, the rest of the little book is unmarked; the anonymous studious reader of a bygone era did not provide more notes. I showed the shrike comment and definition to the hippy woman, and remarked that Derrida would have found material for an essay in that one little jotting. Alas, the young literature major had not read Derrida. What that portends for the state of literary studies at the present time, I cannot say. I snatched up a few more freebies -- Demian by Hesse (with lots of underlining), a collection of short stories by Richard Matheson (lots of illegible comments), and a collection of poems by e. e. cummings with markings that betray the unknown reader's inability to scan the lines -- and, so as not to seem like a cheapskate, purchased for a reasonable sum the score of Paganini's 24 Caprices (my ex-wife discarded my own irreplaceable copy, which had my own bowing and fingering notations and comments such as "Damn! this kills my wrist!"). The young student, who finally introduced herself as Julia, was again impressed by my musical acumen, although I had to admit that I no longer played the violin, and that I wanted the score so that I may follow along with recordings. Nevertheless, the Paganini score received that day its first jotting, the lovely Julia's phone number -- yes, written by hand, not thumb-tapped directly into my phone! Will I call her? Let's see ... She likes Dylan. Good. She hasn't read Derrida. Bad. She likes classical music. Good. I didn't see a cat in the shop. I'll have to ask her if she likes cats. If she does, I shall ask her out, despite the fact that I find it strange that a very attractive young woman of no more than twenty-one or -two should be interested in a not ungainly but certainly not model-material man of forty-one. I suppose that mystery will solve itself. In the meantime, let's discuss Miss Lonelyhearts.
A dreary, depressing, nihilistic yet deeply human novel, awash with symbolism -- some likely unintentional (Miss Lonelyhearts and the self-proclaimed virgin Betty bathing nude in the pristine Connecticut countryside, making me think of baptism and the virgin Mary), some clearly intentional, even overwrought (the grisly dream of the lamb; Miss L. feeling like a "rock" conjuring for me St. Peter, the rock [petra] upon which Christ will build his church [Matthew 16:18]; also Peter's eventual martyrdom, in the patristic tradition, came to mind, foreshadowing Miss L.'s demise) -- Nathanael West's mini masterpiece (and I do not use that term loosely) breaks most of my own private rules for a great piece of literature. Not a single character is likeable; all are profoundly flawed and therefore deeply human, by which I mean that every character is motivated by some desire that will take them beyond their immediate reality and into a space where their value as a person will be recognized. It might be trite to say that each character simply wants to be loved -- but is that not the primal human desire that lies at the root of all tragedy, comedy, romance, and even satire? In this tiny novel -- a novella, to be precise (58 pages in the 1946 New Directions paperback edition that I picked up at Julia's bookshop) -- West gives us all of these perennial genres, yet the whole is enflamed with a feverish desperation, a breakneck racing after something -- perhaps merely a momentary rest in a place of acceptance. Transitions are abrupt, indeed, the art of the segue is absent from this work. Dialogue, except for the superbly surrealistic imagisms of the memorable and aptly named Shrike, is sparse and journalistic -- but it works. Events do not develop in this novella, they occur, up to the finale, which was like a punch in the face.
Nietzsche remarked that pity is the most debasing of emotions, both for the one feeling it and for the one being pitied. West's eponymous male character began his stint as an advice columnist with the idea, fed to him by Shrike, that the whole thing was a big joke. But we see, at the very beginning of the tale, that the letters received by Miss Lonelyhearts (we never learn his real name) are provocative not of laughter but of pity; even if some -- like the letter from a woman with no nose -- produce a guilty chuckle, we are quickly brought to pity when we read the final line of the noseless woman's letter: "Ought I commit suicide?" Shrike's constant joking, while a petty torment to others, is to Miss Lonelyhearts a spur driving him to seek meaning in what he does, that is, to do more than provide insipid advice. He has a Christ complex, which Shrike mercilessly lampoons; but despite Shrike's cynicism and strained rhetoric and mixed metaphors, this impaler of small creatures occasionally spits some gobs of wisdom, as when he dictates the opening of a column to Miss L.:
"The same old stuff," Shrike said. "Why don't you give them something new and hopeful? Tell them about art. Here, I'll dictate:
"Art Is a Way Out.
"Do not let life overwhelm you. When the old paths are choked with the debris of failure, look for newer and fresher paths. Art is just such a path. Art is distilled from suffering. As Mr. Polnikoff exclaimed through his fine Russian beard, when, at the age of eighty-six, he gave up his business to learn Chinese, 'We are, as yet, only at the beginning. ...'
"Art Is One of Life's Richest Offerings.
"For those who have not the talent to create, there is appreciation. For those ...
"Go on from there."
Later in the story, we are shown just how unkind (to put it mildly) Shrike is; but this brief encomium for art, offered at the very beginning, before we witness the full power of Shrike's psychic vampirism, is almost a meta-commentary on the work itself. There is appreciation. Not all works of art must edify. For art is distilled from suffering. And I know, having suffered greatly over the past five years -- loss of home; loss of career; abandoned by wife; abandoned by friends; alcoholism; violent, drug-addled girlfriends -- that I am, indeed, at forty-one, only at the beginning. I write because I must. I have a survival instinct that drives me to seek meaning, and when meaning is absent, to appreciate the mobile nature of the mind, which is not "its own place" (as Milton's Satan believed) but rather the inveterate seeker after places, finding rest in none but some value in all. This manner of intellectual or noetic existence does not lead to happiness (or joy) -- "whose hand is ever at his lips / Bidding adieu" (Keats, Ode on Melancholy) -- but it does lead to achievements, accomplishments. And no matter how small these may be, they are moments in the ever-expanding consciousness of the self, and are therefore of infinite value to the unique, unrepeatable entity that is the I, the ego. So I do not believe, as did Nietzsche, in a morality of joyous freedom; but I do believe in creativity born of suffering.
James Baldwin, in an essay on "The Creative Process" (1962), wrote that "The states of birth, suffering, love, and death, are extreme states: extreme, universal, and inescapable. We all know this, but we would rather not know it. The artist is present to correct the delusions to which we fall prey in our attempts to avoid this knowledge." In West's novella, Miss L. is experiencing, by way of poorly worded letters dumped on his desk each morning, varieties of and variations on these extreme, universal states and is compelled to respond. Since he is neither an artist nor one who appreciates "that life is tragic, and, therefore, unutterably beautiful" (as Baldwin wrote), far from correcting delusions, he falls victim to a destructive delusion of his own, that "His heart was the one heart, the heart of God. And his brain was likewise God's." We , the reader, witness Miss L. engaging in violent, destructive and self-serving behavior, nothing Christ-like. After discovering that he has impregnated no-longer-virgin Betty, Miss L. has a nervous breakdown of sorts -- and we feel no pity for him. A fool of the worst kind, he turned out to be; a fool who thinks he has God on his side. "Miss Lonelyhearts was very happy and inside of his head he was also calling on Christ. But his call was not a curse, it was the shape of his joy." We know such fools for Christ all too well. So when the finale of his accidental death arrives, abruptly and shockingly, we are relieved. Thinking that God will aid him in the performance of a miracle, Miss L. rushes out the door to meet the "cripple" with whose wife he had been sleeping, and finds out too late that the seemingly harmless fellow with the bad leg and distorted features has decided to light somebody up with a shotgun. There is confusion, but Miss L., now no longer a "rock" but a "furnace" (the biblical symbolism is inescapable), tumbles down the stairs "dragging the cripple with him." Perhaps Betty -- no catch herself, but at least tethered to the here-and-now -- will hook up with Bill Wheelwright (if she hasn't already done so) and live in mediocrity ever after ...
* * * * *
Short novels, or novellas, have always appealed to me. I agree, to an extent, with Edgar Allan Poe's remarks about the ideal length of a fictional or poetic work: that the capable writer has the opportunity to produce a single, concentrated, and lasting effect upon the reader in a piece that can be read in a single sitting. Indeed, I read Georges Bataille's novella The Story of the Eye nearly twenty years ago, at the height (or depth, as it were) of my Surrealist phase, and have not forgotten it: the episode in which the lady squats over the saucer of milk and ... ahem ... the bullfight after which the bull's bullhood becomes a meal ... and of course the business with the eye. But my recollection has nothing to do with the "shock value" of the piece (it has been described as literary pornography -- it is not that); rather, the morbid anti-sexuality of the short work forced Yours Truly to seek a meaning, a parable, allegory, anything -- only to realize that life does not contain literary devices. I read the Marquis de Sade's gargantuan "novel" 120 Days of Sodom around the same time (someone, I think it was Klossowski, quipped that reading this work was like reading a pornographic phonebook) and am only able to recall a single phrase: "He embuggers bucks." Hilarious, but not profound -- at least not in a literary sense. Our lives are episodic -- as well as "nasty, brutish, and short" -- and novels that accurately reflect or imitate life -- even if that life involves coprophiliac fantasies or sex games with eggs -- should be episodic as well, if not nasty, etc. Yesterday, I went out early to pick up some books at the local library and then ate lunch in the park -- it was a gorgeous day -- after which I took the bus to the next town -- a quaint, almost mediaeval-looking place with houses dating back to the early nineteenth century -- and paid a visit to the bookshop where dreamy Julia works. And there I found her, sitting behind the counter, engrossed in some activity with her phone. She looked up, smiled, and gave a warm hello. Now these brief sentences would, I think, meet with Poe's approval; they are certainly economical. My reader's imagination is called upon to fill in what most of our contemporary novelists would have laboriously spelled out: minute details about the park, exactly why and how the day was gorgeous, people on the bus, architecture of the town, and so on. West doesn't belabor such points in his novella, and so he achieves economy. A single reading has been sufficient to maintain his work unsullied in my mind. Similarly, seeing Julia for a second time added nothing to her beauty, nor did it detract. A changeless angel is she -- short, yes, but so far no evidence of nastiness or brutishness.
After exchanging pleasantries, I told her about Miss Lonelyhearts and the sharp-beaked Shrike who pierced so many hearts but could not pierce the "rock" Miss L. "So you liked the book?" Like is too comon a term. "I appreciated it," I said, "the way one appreciates a drawing by Masson, for example." I brought up Masson because I was returning in thought to my Surrealistic youth, when my satchel was stuffed with books by Breton, Soupault, Artaud, Bataille, Rimbaud, Lautreamont, and other Surrealists, proto-Surrealists, and anti-Surrealist Surrealists, and the Village was my home. Julia did not know Masson, so she did a quick Google search. I told her to check out "The Massacre," a brutal drawing, executed (no pun intended) with frenzied lines suggesting the manic haste of the artist and the feverish rage of the knife-wielding brute doing the killing. Julia was not convinced of its artistic value, and when I gazed upon it again, after many years, I found that I could not give a coherent statement as to its value. With Max Ernst's painting, The Daughters of Lot, things were different. I told her the biblical story, of which she was -- and I don't know why I am still surprised at these educational lacunae -- unfamiliar. After God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot went with his daughters to a cave up in the mountains, where they got their dad drunk and slept with him, in order to "preserve the seed" of their papa. They each bore Lot a son (Genesis 19:30-38). Julia was amazed that the Bible contains such tales. I told her that there are many more such scandalous episodes in the Hebrew scriptures, mentioning Noah's drunkenness, and giving her an embellished account of David and Bathsheba. She was suitably impressed, but since there were now several customers in the store, we could not continue our conversation. A perfect opening was provided then. So I quickly asked her if there is a pet store nearby, as I needed to get cat food. She said yes, there is, and with a smile asked me what kind of cat I have. I told her Siamese, and she said, in a breathy voice, "I love Siamese, they're my favorite." Splendid, I thought, she likes cats -- and I asked her out for lunch on her next day off. She accepted. Two days from now I will be having lunch with the changeless angel.
Of course, the first date will go well. And the second, and the third. But eventually, sooner or later, she will pierce my heart with her own shrike-beak and tear it out. It will soon regenerate, to be torn out yet again by another Erinye (I am mixing myths here, I know). Such is the story of my life. So why do I endure? Well, some clues are given above. I find purpose in accompishments, however small. Next week I will begin conducting a two-part seminar on essay writing at the local library. My hope is that at least one of the participants produces an essay that is publishable. A feeling of accomplishment would result, for me, from that. But what I really want is love. Again. I had it once, and it taught me that Tennyon was full of shit. "'Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all." My ass. To lose at love is to have one's heart and balls ripped out on a daily basis. Memory is a bitch of a vulture that preys upon the open wound that will never heal -- until someone greater comes along who will heal the wound and restore one to loving and loveable wholeness again. That is what I seek. Is Julia the one? Too early to tell. I certainly hope so. The eyes of the beloved are the windows to the soul, as classic Platonic philosophy held; and James Baldwin has described precisely the experience of the beloved's gaze: "anyone ... who has ever been in love ... knows that the one face which one can never see is one's own face."
One's lover ... sees the face you wear, and this face can elicit the most extraordinary reactions. We do the things we do, and feel what we feel, essentially because we must -- we are responsible for our actions, but we rarely understand them. It goes without saying, I believe, that if we understood ourselves better, we would damage ourselves less. ("The Creative Process")
And so, another trite-sounding conclusion: we can only love another person to the extent that we love ourselves. Loving is not understanding, however. I agree with Baldwin that if I understood myself better -- if I had understood myself better, back then -- I would not have done so much damage to myself, nor would I have allowed others -- one "other" in particular -- to damage me to the extent that they (she) have (has). I have pulled myself together, put down the bottle for good, entered therapy, and returned to the struggle for meaning -- not because I understand myself, but because I love myself. I am a noetic seed that has been cast into this world to either sprout or rot away ... or get gobbled up by a bird.
* * * * *
"You spiritual lovers think that you alone suffer. But you are mistaken. Although my love is of the flesh flashy, I too suffer." These words of Shrike, of the harpoon beak, when spoken to Julia over a giant stromboli that we were unable to finish, produced luscious laughter that made a kiss inevitable. And so it was. She had just told me of her last boyfriend, of a whopping eight months, and how it had taken her several weeks to get over him; that is what provoked the Shrike quote. Before that, we had been speaking of safe, comfortable things, such as places we would like to visit -- and I, being forty-one to her twenty-four (I was pleased to discover that she is two years closer to my middle age than I had previously thought), have visited several of the places on her list, and so was able to keep her interested as I embellished my memories with anecdotes taken from books I was sure she had not read. Very odd, a literature major whose reading seems to consist solely of the Twilight series, Toni Morrison, and a biography of Amy Winehouse ... Literature is dead, they say. Long live literature! After the lunch and the kiss, we strolled about the college town and did some shopping. I bought for her Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch, and pointed her to my review of that superb work. Then, just when I thought the date couldn't possibly get any better ... it didn't. Julia asked me about my ex-wife. My mind reeled. Memories of joyous times, long romantic walks, fetish-spiced lovemaking, deep conversations ... I couldn't talk of that stuff, I might tear up. Memories of bad times, my drunkenness, being left home alone at Christmas, no more lovemaking thanks to demon alcohol, no more conversations thanks to same ... No way I was speaking of any of that. The gray area, not her fault for leaving me, I brought it on myself by refusing to get help ... But no, she made a vow, she left me when I needed her the most, took everything I had, left me penniless and homeless with an addiction ... She is surely in a very satisfying relationship by now and I am walking about with a woman seventeen years my junior -- who has not read Milton! "So, do you and your ex-wife keep in touch?" "No." "What's her name?" "Butcher-bird. She impales her victims on thorns."
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